Damascus

I am making an apartment in Damascus my home.

Lunettes

Moi, je porte des lunettes pour voir mes reves en couleur.

Rush Hour

A black Mercedes hit me when I was on my way to the theatre. I had just left the All American shop to order twenty balloons, pink and blue, for the performance tomorrow when my mind wandered to the crying clerk. Earlier, I stepped into her kitschy jewelry shop to ask for directions. She was on the phone and hurriedly put it down, wiping away tears from both her cheeks. I stood in the frame of the doorway, in complete shock, and gargled, "Do you know where the All American shop is?"

I was wearing long, tan leather shoes from Cairo, and the Mercedes ran over my right foot. There are actually tire marks over the laces. I think I crashed against the right door or something. A soldier came up to me, the two guys hopped out of the car, shook my hand, everyone was asking me if I was okay. I kept saying, "Ana majdoub! Ana majdoub! Ma shefit!"

Abu Fadi pulled the Renault aside, just meters away from that tank near City Cafe, and came up to me. "Ana majdoub! Ana majdoub!" I repeated as we got into the car.

I think I was in acute shock (maybe?). My hands were jittery, and I remember having to relax my cheek muscles from a frozen expression of glee. He scolded me for calling myself an idiot in front of all those people.

"They're the idiots! Not you! It's a bad word! Don't call yourself an idiot! Yella, I'll take you home, put some ice on your foot and your knee, forget the theatre."

Not a half an hour later, I was sitting in the second row of Masah al Medinah, notebook on lap and pen in hand, for HOW NANCY WISHED THAT EVERYTHING WAS AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE by Rabih Mroue and Fadi Toufic with Ziad Antar, Lina Saneh, Hatem Imam, and Rabih Mroue. I've been following the work of Lina and Rabih for over a year now, brooding over their texts and videorecordings of past performances. I was exactly where I needed to be.

The Satisfaction of Mourning

My brother told me that my uncles were standing in the grave as the others handed down Nena's body. Bare feet in the mud and slacks rolled up to their knees, they reached for her body, wrapped in white gauze, and laid it in the wet earth.

My brother also told me that he told Nena that I loved and missed her and wished I could be there with her. My mother also did this. After the funeral, my sister read the piece that I wrote in memory of Nena to my extended family under the roof of my uncle's suburban house.

Nena had a severe stroke and was comatose for a few days before she passed away on the evening of Thursday, August 16. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were all at the hospital, and shortly after her passing each person entered the room in solitude. I imagine my brother Z holding her hand, her chiseled veins now asleep, and speaking softly with his head bowed down.

I've never seen a dead human body. I've never been to a funeral. And it was at once so very strange and somehow reassuring to know that my mourning family was compensating for my absence with speech, conjuring my bodily presence before, during, and after Nena's death.

Strange because I was not mourning in Beirut. Certainly, images of death were brewing: of Nena on her death bed, of my quaking aunt, of my family in black against a gloomy Atlanta sky peering down at a lifeless body while an anonymous sheikh spoke generically on death, heaven, and such. But I did not and am not grieving.

I am inclined to interpret this dearth of sadness as evidence of a broader sense of apathy--"Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas." Sometimes, I feel compelled to espouse some sort of deontological ethical practice and force myself to mourn. But I dismiss these thoughts without fail, repulsed by the immorality of falsity.

However, that leaves me stranded. Obviously, as evidenced by the fact of this entry, I am searching--publicly--for a way to respond. Even though it leaves me uneasy, perhaps this quest in and of itself is satisfactory.

In a Cairo cafe two years ago

Everywhere
I go to there
I see your face
you Body your eyes
all of you your smile





[It came with the check. Scribbled on a pink notecard.]

Cafards

I grew to tolerate the small cafards that reigned freely in my chambre de bonne in the 16eme. Sure, with their soft charcoal color and space age-esque design, they were quite comely as far as cockroaches go, but terrifying nonetheless. Every night, I'd comb my sheets for any critters before hermetically sealing my entire body with cheap cotton sheets. I was horrified by the prospect of a cafard inching along my face and creeping around my lips, but still my head remained exposed.

After my second night in the chambre de bonne, I asked Marie-Helene, the spacey landlord, about the cockroaches, and she chirped, "If you think your room is bad, you should see my kitchen at dawn!" It was unbearably sticky, so she gave me a fan, and that was that.

Naturally, my first response was to buy poison from the Monoprix. I set four landmines in the darkest corners of my chambre de bonne, all of which were within arms reach of the bed. I waited a few days, imagining a proud pawn roach carrying the poisonous "food" on his back to the queen's lair. Upon gobbling up the treat, she'd immediately dematerialize into metallic crimson ash, and all of her pawns would follow suit in a musical domino effect. In the end, however, I probably did more harm to my own health than to theirs given that I was practically inhaling the poison every night as I slept. Incidentally, the poison was ineffective.

The curative approach being a failure, I adopted preventative measures and began to blast-clean my room with bleach, lemon Pine-Sol, and such everyday. Sometimes, I'd squeeze a glob of neon blue gel directly onto the roaches that so happened to be in the way of my cleaning. They would die slowly, and I could simply flush them down the drain instead of having to crush their bodies and to squeeze the corpsed exoskeleton in a tissue between my fingers as I transfered it to the garbage.

Militaristic cleanliness was gratifying but did little to eradicate the cafards. Their resilience dwarfed my stamina, so I resigned to coexistence, a one state solution.

In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children

DUBAI: A one-legged Emirati father of 78 children is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 offspring by 2015.

Daad Mohammad Murad Abdel-Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.

"In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children," the local tabloid quoted Rahman as saying. "After that I will stop marrying. I have to have at least three more marriages to hit the century."

The UAE newspaper splashed its front page with a picture of Rahman surrounded by his children, the eldest of whom is 36 and the youngest is 20. Two of his current three wives are also pregnant. Rahman said his large family lives in 15 houses. He supports them with his military pension and the help of the government of Ajman, one of seven emirates that comprise the UAE. -AFP

In THE DAILY STAR - LEBANON
TUESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2007